Before I start rambling, just gonna say many of the problems are not exclusive to rogues, hell some of them I fell are problem with the game as whole.

1. Lacking aesthetics. Its looks really booring and dull to watch our animation and attacks, feels like we have 3 animations and can glow purple and get transparent ands that's it.
2. There is like no weight behind attacks and especially finishers, both visually and number wise. This goes hand in hand with whole everything is baked in auro attacks, poisons and slice and dice problem.
We don't really bring anything special to raids, but atleast its abit better with buff/debuffs now..
Pure melee dps, we aren't really flexible.
3. We haven't really change much since vanilla while other classes have gotten many shiny new toys and changes. (ofc things have been improved not even near the rest)
4. Personally I hate the restriction with combo points on the target would rather have them on our self, not only to get rid of much clunky target swapping and getting rid of another spell on the bar (redirect), but i feel the combat would be much more fluent and engaging.
5. The talent tree.. well, don't want to go in to details but we all know how bad some of the choices was and that many of them felt like thing that should baked in to the class. Atleast they try to fix some of it now, but personally I don't like the prep baseline thing, I rather have deleted as whole with cold snap and readiness and balance the cds it reseted instead.
6. I atleast don't feel agile, rogue/assassins/thief/swashbuckler/ninja/whatever ish atleast while playing the class.
7. Another personally thing, even if the Win ratio is in my favor against other players in bgs and such still. I cant stop the feeling that everyone rogues like a free kill or something not to bother with since we are at most annoying insect that's just around them. Before people hated and feared us since our class is about cheap tricks and underhand tactics.. not so much anymore.
8. CDs we relies on cds so damn much..
9. All problems combined with our scaling that noone wants to play us or want us in the beginning of the expansion and at the end the numbers get abit of boost just because want play the strange class, not because they enyoy the class.

There is ofc more and there is so many nit picky things to but this could go on forever.

In my mind I this how rogue looks like, not that could ever work int he game, but still.

I'm not "set off" in any way whatsoever; I neither feel offended nor am I trying to cause offense. Sorry if I misrepresented myself.

- What I meant with "in my favor" I meant the point you made didn't actually support what you claimed, if anything, it'd be in support of my claim. In other words; I questioned why you even brought that up.

- When I say "should" I'm not advocating that we get back our ability to one-shot people(although 400k Ambushes could be quite fun to play around with...). I'm referring to our PvP kit (specifically Sub's) seemingly being designed with "stealth-one-shotting" in mind(heavy ties to stealth all around, plus abilities that only function during stunlocks). With that kind of kit we don't seem to be made for sustained fights of any sorts; we're good for a quick opening, followed by a few attacks, plus the popping of offensive/defensive cooldowns, and by then we should be out of combat already. If not, we're royally screwed. We're good for a decent opening burst, with some follow up attacks, following which we've got nothing else to bring - meaning we should have a devastating opening, and then be forced to retreat. And that was indeed how the class worked for a while. Hell, Sub was more or less exactly like that in 4.3. That's not how it is now. We're still as cooldown reliant as before, but instead of being a deadly force with everything popped, we need everything popped just to get on the level of every one else.

That's why the old core design features of our class no longer work very well, in my opinion. The openings are weak and insignificant, the follow up attacks are pathetic, and both survivability and damage are tied to cooldowns. We're essentially cooldown reliant burst-assassins, with lots of cooldowns and no burst. I just don't see how that makes any sense. That's why we "should" either get more emphasis on our opening and burst damage, or simply have the core mechanics changed.

- Yes, the rogue/assassin/thief-archetype is still alive and well. Not in WoW, however. You once again put emphasis on how rogues "jump from stealth to spread mayhem". How!? When?! You can't possibly be talking about the present WoW!? We've got some of the lowest damage output in PvP right now, last time I checked. Or do I misunderstand you entirely, and are you just talking about the concept of rogues? The idea of a stealthy assassin who jumps unnoticed into the fray? If so, I still don't follow you. Yes, the concept is fine, but it's currently implemented very poorly, as I've pointed out above, and requires some dev-attention to be "fixed".

- Indeed, one of our major strengths is our ability to control and pin down our targets. That's also why we've been such potent duelists for such a long time. However, currently, damage is so low we can't kill our enemies before we run out of ccs - which is the main problem of the class in PvP. As mentioned, we're burst assassins without much burst. I still remember dueling a Prot Warrior who wanted me to kill him (was in the ilvl 460-70ish zone). Ended up getting him down far enough for Second Wind to activate, upon which his HP stopped moving... Haven't dueled again since then. Our control is more than fine. Our damage just doesn't compare to that of every else.

I think we largely agree, Incineration, and thank you for your detailed response. I appreciate it.

By "mayhem" I am referring to the element of surprise + damamge + CC. However, I agree that we need more burst damage, as I stated in post #82.

FYI: I put virtually no stock in duels or 1v1 situations in terms of pvp balance, since the most micro situation "that counts" is 2v2, or actually 3v3 these days. That said, I still agree we need more burst. For the moment, I just focus on what we can do more than on what we can't. I find myself peeling or tilting micro-engagements in BG's or 1-shotting noobs. 1v1 versus someone with skill/gear, I agree: once our CD's are gone -- as you and Coldkil point out -- we're sitting ducks.

Last weekend I got bored with all of LFR done and arena capped for the week, so I decided to level a monk for a break. He's level 55 now and I don't think it will be easy to go back to my rogue

The WW monk had all of rogue's problems addressed:
- combo points stay on the player
- you can generate combo points with a defensive ability without having a target (expel harm)
- you don't need to have full combo points to execute a non-gimped finisher
- sustained damage is good
- you don't feel energy starved without being GCD locked
- the class is visually interesting, with nice animations of kicking, punching, rolling, etc...
- AND this one is big: you don't have to maintain Rupture and SnD to do full damage. You only have the "30% ArP buff" which is just one finisher with one combo point every 20 sec and that's it.

I can't emphasize enough the HUGE impact that last point has on me and my gameplay experience. When playing my rogue I feel like pulling my hair out when I have to build 5 combo points just to execute the most boring finishing move in the game - SnD.

This is how my leveling/PVE experience goes with my rogue:

I want fun! I want to do a big eviscerate but no, I have to have SnD, else I'm losing all that damage from autoattacks and poisons. OK, I have SnD - I want my big eviscerate now! No, you must have Rupture too, else the eviscerate will not be so big. OK, I build these 5 combo points again for rupture but I'm out of energy, ok I wait.... - there, I have it. Now I want my big eviscerate! No, build another 5 combo points and then you can have it! But I'm out of energy again! I start building 5 combo points again - builder, wait, builder, wait, builder wait... finally 5 CPs again. Oh, the mob is dead! But no worries, once every 1 min you have redirect to transfer some combo points to the next target to start building your rupture on it. No thanks, this is not how I understand fun.

And this is how it looks on my monk:
- jab (the first one generates 3 chi)
- tiger palm (1 chi)
- rising sun kick (2 chi) - big damage (fun)
At that point I already had 2 finishers that DID DAMAGE!
- One possibility: tiger strikes procs - windfury-like effect + SnD-equivalent that auto-triggers for 4 sec! without wasting combo points on it
- Another possibility: swift reflexes procs - you strike back for big damage, this is fun
- Another possibility: combo breaker procs - do one finisher for free!
- Then I can jab, blackout kick or jab,jab, firsts of fury - big damage and fun
- mob dead, roll to the next mob, no worries if another mob tagged you and you can't stealth

It's such a better gameplay experience overall. If I were a new player and I were to try both classes for a day or so, there is absolutely no way I would pick rogue over monk or feral. This implies that there will be almost no fresh players to fill rogue ranks, because you must be really determined to level a rogue all the way to 90, and it is a huge undertaking for a new player. The class will be left with the old-time hardcore die-hard players unless the fun factor is drastically increased. The 5.2 changes will just make the class OP in the hands of the good players, but will not make it fun to play in any way.

Agree, but keep in mind that monks come after 8 years of developement and a lot has changed - from the ultimate goal of the game to new mechanics - and the technology limits that were up long time ago now don't matter anymore.

Yes, sometimes i look at monks and say "hell, but this is what we're asking for years" but still, their concept and gameplay is completely different from ours, and this is a good thing. If monks had our same role/gimmick/mechanics but all working/feeling better, then we would have been a dead class for sure.

Instead, i've seen many rerolling main, but not much of them came from rogues.

We still have something to do and say in game. Last blue posts show that they're taking the problem seriously - still it all depends on how they decide to solve it.

Just about every other class right now is a super saiyan, button-mashing, proc-happy experience comparable to a game of Whack-A-Mole, with buttons lighting up all over the place and glowing UI elements flashing in your face with fancy over-the-top spell effects that nearly cause you to go blind.

Some people have no problem with rogues being a bit on the "boring" side. For some of us, that's why we stick around.

This man speaks the truth.

It's easy to see whenever you step in a raid. Even with effects set on "Low", it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on in melee range of a boss. It's a non-stop special effects festival. Everyone and their mother seem to have super powers with fancy pyrotechnics.

Everyone ? No ! Rogues still do what they do best : being sneaky bastards that slash and stab and slay. Nothing fancy here. Want bells and whistles ? Here, have a bag full of devious devices and dirty tricks. Still nothing spectacular-looking. Why would you want such a thing ? You're not supposed to be remarked. Discretion is supposed to be a cardinal value of rogues, and I'm plenty happy that it has stayed this way up until now.

As for the gameplay aspect, I like Slice and Dice. I really do. (In contrast, I've always disliked the warrior ability Flurry, which is the very definition of a passive and boring feature.) The concept of "maintenance" is attractive to me. I'm not playing whack-a-mole by pressing the flashing buttons; I'm managing timers, gauges and resources. It feels methodical, which suits the class well.
Certainly it's not for everybody, but then again different classes are supposed to offer different game experiences. If you want a more frantic gameplay and love being GCD-capped, I recommend that you give a try to Fury warrior. I've tried it, not my cup of tea, but that might be more suited to your tastes.

If we're going to make such caricatural claims as "rogues are so passive you can afk autoattack and still be highly effective, that's boring", I could reply "warrior gameplay is so hectic you could repeatedly smash your head on your keyboard and perform as well, that's stupid". But I won't, because although there's a bit of truth to it in both cases, it's simplistic and doesn't do the actual gameplay justice.

TLDR version : Different classes offer different game experiences. I enjoy my rogue with its current gameplay and aesthetics and believe they fit the class. Please don't turn him into a warrior with stealth.

That is not to say I'm against change.

Certainly, an aspect that can make the combo system feel boring is that the finishers don't really feel like finishers; they lack oomph, they don't have enough impact. I think a rogue building their combo points on a target should make the target have an "OH CRAP" moment knowing what's about to come their way. I'd like Eviscerate to function more like Chaos Bolt, for instance. Right now, it's equivalent to a slightly beefed up Sinister Strike. That's not exciting. That does not feel worth building five CP for.

On a related note, keeping the maintenance aspect while rebalancing the damage from autoattack-related things to abilities would be all right in my book.

I like sober effects, but I wouldn't be against more flashy ones on our cooldowns. Shadow Blades is underwhelming in that regard.

Hey, some crazy wishlisting : Envenom rework.

Blindside is suppressed.

Envenom now reads : "Deals Nature damage proportional to the number of combo points on the target. Envenom increases your poison application chance by 100% and allows the use of Dispatch for X seconds plus one second per combo point."

Boom, emphasis back on the finisher and no more random proc. Ideas are cheap and plentiful, but that's the kind of thing I'd like to see in a finishing move.

I liked it when clothies and rogues were always like delicate machine guns. We can kick your ass but can't take a punch to the face. They gave us too much get out of jail free cards and a constant cleave so they passively nerfed us into a bad looking homeless guy with a couple knives.

The new abilities don't peak my interest either.

This is what I recommend:

I'd like to see instant Rupture, Recupe, and SnD up on mutilate to allow us to use more big hitters.
Agil = 2 AP, we cannot fully attack during heavy aoe but range can still annhilate, our up time should be godly.
Envenom spreads DP to all targets within 15yrd.
BF = reverted back to CD based ability that hits additional
Remove some survivability talents and make getting ambushed or attacked an "oh shit" moments of pure agony for other classes.

I liked it when clothies and rogues were always like delicate machine guns. We can kick your ass but can't take a punch to the face. They gave us too much get out of jail free cards and a constant cleave so they passively nerfed us into a bad looking homeless guy with a couple knives.

I believe the expression you're looking for is "Glass Cannon" and I totally agree with your statement. I havn't PVP'd in a very long time and the main reason is that not alot in our arsenal seems to hit my opponent with the same force as he's hitting me with. Instead of bieng a glass cannon, we're now an iron water gun untill our cd's run out, then we're just a water gun.